Gamer dies after playing World of Warcraft for 19 hours straight

This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Now that Blizzard has announced that players can purchase game time subscriptions with in-game gold, World of Warcraft can become a game that literally pays for itself — that is, if a player is determined enough. However, a report from The Mirror suggests that too much of a thing — even an intangible quality like determination — can be a bad thing: 24-year-old gamer Wu Tai coughed up blood, collapsed, and died before his fellow gamers at an internet cafe during a 19-hour World of Warcraft session.

No, he didn’t spend 19 hours in Barrens chat. Toward the end of playing WoW for nearly an entire day straight, fellow gamers in the internet cafe saw Wu Tai turn away from the screen and begin violently coughing. He slumped in his chair after the coughing attack, and his gaming compatriots noticed he was dabbing blood away from his mouth with a handkerchief. When asked if he was okay, the suffering gamer replied that he did feel better and would be fine. The cafe patrons called for an ambulance anyway, but Wu Tai died before they arrived.

Obviously, playing World of Warcraft didn’t kill a completely healthy 24-year-old. He likely had a prior ailment and, instead of resting, used his precious little energy to play games. An autopsy will figure out the cause of death, and should be able to suss out why playing 19 hours of WoW would be fatal — or at least discover that it was all just an unfortunate coincidence.

Even though it’s pretty condescending when every Nintendo game tells you to take 15-minute breaks from playing their games once an hour, the company might just have a point in extreme cases.